A GUN-OBSESSED Durham University student who spent £20,000 buying firearm parts over the internet with his mother’s credit card has been jailed for more than three years.

Ramsay Scott, 21, was tracked down last year when Customs officers at East Midlands Airport intercepted a parcel from the US containing a barrel for a 9mm pistol.

The High Court in Edinburgh heard that Scott, a former public schoolboy from Longniddry, East Lothian, had also accessed websites featuring "extreme violence" and high-profile shooting massacres.

Scott, who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome or a schizoid personality disorder, admitted a number of breaches of the Firearms Act when he appeared in court earlier this year.

Sentencing was postponed to now to allow reports to be prepared after the judge heard that Scott had planned to kill himself if he failed his uni exam.

Lord Uist jailed Scott for three years and nine months and ordered that he be supervised for a year when released.

The judge told him: "When you committed this offence you were well aware that what you were doing was criminal.

"I find it disturbing that you were able to spend about £20,000 in the purchase of these items by way of your mother’s credit card with her permission."

Lothian and Borders Police were alerted after the package, which was addressed to Scott's mother, was intercepted in East Midlands Airport on August 5 last year.

The barrel found in the parcel was for a particular type of self-loading pistol, a prohibited weapon under the Firearms Act.

Later that month, police searched his home in an early morning raid and found weapons in his bedroom that were not listed on a firearms certificate he held.

Officers found guns, component parts and ammunition scattered around the floor.

A collection of knives was also seized, including a "fist dagger", a hunting knife, commando knives, two flick-knives and a "hooked slashing knife".

Lord Uist told Scott, who has no previous convictions, that he had obtained the items from the US through an "elaborate scheme".

He said: "It was only because a shipment was intercepted by customs at East Midlands Airport that your activities were discovered by police.

"You have had a lifelong interest in firearms and you initially maintained that you had these items merely because you were interested in building weapons from scratch but later admitted that it was your intention to commit suicide by shooting yourself if you failed your exam.

"It is impossible to say what, if anything, you would have done with the weapons, had the police not intervened.

"But there must have been at least the possibility that you would have used them to cause injury to others, particularly in view of the websites you had accessed on your computer dealing with extreme violence and previous shooting massacres at Hungerford and Dunblane."

Scott, who had completed one year of a bio-medical sciences degree at Durham University, admitted eight charges.

Some of the charges carry a minimum sentence of five years but the minimum sentence was three years for Scott because he was under 21 at the time of the offences.

The judge considered imposing an order for lifelong restriction on Scott but he said the criteria for such a move were not met.

Defence QC Ian Duguid argued that such an "excessive" sentence was unnecessary.

Mr Duguid told the court a report compiled on Scott suggested he is "relatively unlikely" to go on to cause serious harm.

The lawyer added that Scott’s Asperger’s syndrome diagnosis helped him get a much greater insight into his behaviour and personality traits.

"He seems to be a much different individual from the one who was detained and arrested by police," said Mr Duguid.